A JOURNEY TO NATURE 



in their sentences something of the same juicy 

 aroma of that elfin fruit? 



But to return to Gabe, I found in him a grate 

 ful mental relaxation. His animal equanimity 

 had a soothing effect like the liberty of empty 

 rooms after a rout. You felt that he was not one 

 of those fellows who have a stock of words on 

 hand and are continually looking for an oppor 

 tunity to which they can fit them. His mind, or 

 whatever it was that occupied the place of that esse, 

 always took the straight line between a thing and 

 a word. He would no more be original or smart 

 than he would be liberal or imaginative. His 



. 



companionship was therefore a kind of mental 

 water-cure. I could sit and watch him saw wood 

 for an hour, and our conversation would, as 

 Henry James somewhere put it, &quot; be ruffled 

 delightfully by the passing airs of the unsaid.&quot; 

 I remarked to him while thus employed, &quot; This 

 will be a bad season for potatoes, Gabe.&quot; He 

 stopped a moment, expectorated, and then came 

 at it as the crow flies, &quot; Gosh to hemlock, that s 

 so,&quot; and then the wood-sawing went on. 



I noticed that irony and repartee took on, in 

 Gabe s presence, a curious analogy to water on a 

 duck s back, and you cannot imagine how deplet 

 ing and soothing all this is to get where every 

 thing is trite and simple, and has been said a 

 thousand times before, and is none the less valu 

 able on that account. It has occurred to me that 

 as heaven is always regarded as a place of rest, 

 perhaps it may be a place where everybody gives 



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